A new laboratory techniques journal for life scientists and chemists launches on 1 October 2004. Nature Methods, the latest addition to the Nature family, will publish major methodological developments and provide scientists with new tools that can be applied to their research.
With the goal of creating a highly visible forum for the presentation of novel methods, the journal believes that major developments in the field often take place across disciplines. As such this information can miss out on the wide exposure and interdisciplinary exchange it deserves.
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A Salk Institute research team has made a discovery that provides valuable insight into a complication that is common among organ transplant patients and could eventually lead to new therapies for diabetes.
The team, led by Professor Marc Montminy, discovered a molecular connection linking two key chemical pathways that are essential for blood sugar regulation. The team published its findings in the Oct. 1 issue of Cell.
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The International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) has awarded Uri Alon, senior scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, with the 2004 Overton Prize. The prize was awarded at the ISCB’s annual meeting, Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB), held in conjunction with the European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB), in Glasgow, Scotland, from July 31 to August 4.
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Traditional plant breeders improve the quality and yield of crops by crossing plants with desired traits to create a new, hopefully improved, hybrid strain. But traditional breeding is limited by the available gene pool of a cultivated plant species and eventually hits a wall–reshuffling the same genetic Read the rest of this story »

Scientists have developed a new method for DNA amplification that could replace the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a technique that is invaluable for both medical diagnostics and basic research but which is confined to the laboratory. In the August issue of EMBO reports, Huimin Kong and colleagues at New England Biolabs (Beverly, MA, USA) describe a way to copy mass amounts of DNA that overcomes some of the limitations of this earlier technique.
The new technique is called HDA (helicase-dependent amplification). HDA is as simple as PCR, but has significant advantages. PCR requires thermocycling to heat and cool a sample of DNA, to allow denaturation (separating DNA into single strands) and synthesis (copying single strands to create new double-stranded DNA). HDA instead mimics nature’s method of replicating DNA by using a helicase enzyme to denature the DNA. As a result, the entire HDA reaction can be performed at one temperature that is optimized for synthesis, eliminating the need for an expensive and power-hungry thermocycler.

HDA could expand the application of DNA amplification to situations in which the requirements for PCR have made it prohibitive. The costs are likely to be more modest and, most importantly, the simplicity of HDA makes it suitable for the development of hand-held DNA diagnostic devices that could be used to detect pathogens at the point-of-care or in the field.

ITHACA, N.Y. — A laser-based microscopy technique may have settled a long-standing debate among neuroscientists about how brain cells process energy — while explaining what’s really happening in PET (positron emission tomography) imaging and offering a better way to observe the damage that strokes and neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, wreak on brain cells. Read the rest of this story »

If the emotional memory of a traumatic car accident or the thrill of first love are remembered with a special resonance, it is because they engage different brain structures than do normal memories, Duke University researchers have discovered. Read the rest of this story »

Emory University scientists have received a five-year grant for more than $3 million to participate in a new National Institutes of Health (NIH) initiative to develop powerful computer modeling techniques to analyze and respond to infectious disease outbreaks. Read the rest of this story »

In a major study conducted at 20 centers in the United States and Europe, a bioartificial liver developed by researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center reduced mortality significantly among patients suffering from acute liver failure, the dramatic loss of liver function that can cause death in days or even hours. Study results are published in the May issue of Annals of Surgery. Read the rest of this story »

Cornell University researchers already have been able to detect the mass of a single cell using submicroscopic devices. Now they’re zeroing in on viruses. And the scale of their work is becoming so indescribably small that they have moved beyond Read the rest of this story »